The first thing to do on Mothering Sunday must be to thank mothers but even that apparently simple proposition needs qualification and amplification.
I guess most people think about their mothers every day, even long after they are dead, so why dedicate a special day to thanking them? Perhaps because it’s worth dedicating a day to thinking about motherhood and its wider significance.
Gratitude is, however, the first and most important feeling we will and should have for our mothers, but even that gratitude would be hollow without acknowledging the pain involved in being a mother; physical pain, work and stress. Nor should we forget the pain of those who would be mothers but can’t and those who are but wish they were not. And as our readings today have reminded us motherhood is not only biological; adoption of one sort or another is possible and not incompatible with biological motherhood. I have been fortunate to have a series of women whom, I realise now, have been substitute mothers to me although they may not have realised this themselves. And finally, we must take into account the fact that the qualities of motherhood do not reside alone in actual parents.
So motherhood is a bit more complicated than apple pie and I want to draw from this complication a sort of theology of motherhood; why and howmotherhood may help us to understand our relation to God. The common element in all the variations on and aspects of motherhood which I have mentioned, is need; not mere biological necessity but emotional
reliance. I want to suggest this has something to tell us about our religion, our “binding” to God.
Motherhood is so universal, it’s not surprising the church has sought to harness its power. The obvious example of this is the promotion of the Virgin Mary. Mary’s own experience of maternity, however, and her subsequent reputation, not least that she never seems to age any further than late teens make her a strange role model in this respect, however suitable she may be as an intercessor seen as able to influence her son.
And then the church has seen itself as “Holy Mother Church” but historically a more male led and paternalistic institution can hardly be imagined. Its achievements in social justice, education, and care for the poor have been great but is it motherly? It’s not been noted for patience, tolerance and a listening disposition, and the advent of many excellent female priests and bishops has not, I think changed that much.
The problem is perhaps that the family model for thinking about and mythologising the deity is highly ambivalent; Homer portrays the delinquent Greek gods as parents caring for their children; Richard Wagner’s amoral gods nevertheless love their children although family life on Olympus and in Valhalla is decidedly dysfunctional. Christianity is often held up as the bastion of family values, but if it is, that is not attributable to its founder’s attitude to his own family.
These attempts to harness the experience of motherhood fail, or only partially succeed, because, I suggest, they do not take sufficient account of the chief motivator in the relation between child and mother. That is need; initially the need for warmth and sustenance but moving gradually into emotional and spiritual need. This is surely parallel to our relationship with
God; first as our creator, but growing from that physical reliance to an emotional dependency and spiritual support.
Consider prayer. Isn’t there an inevitability and something irresistible about how we pray? We may not believe that God will really intervene and avert or remedy some disaster, but we cannot hold back telling our concerns to one whom we love and especially a mother, so we must tell God about our worries, even when we know that He understands them better than we do ourselves. So a child will tell its anxiety or sadness to a mother who knows about it perfectly well.
The same is true of happiness. Who has not felt the absolute compulsion to tell someone about some success or joyful event and not just tell but say thank you. That feeling is most acute, most compelling and ultimately most satisfying when expressed to a mother or to God, because we know our mothers want us to be happy and so, although we may not always realise it, does God. It is our creator through the agency of our parents that we have been made creatures capable of love and joy.
As we feel the need to thank, so when things go wrong and when we experience the pain of guilt, it is only in contrition and confession that we will find relief, and only from God or a parent that we know we will find that reassurance and reacceptance that is forgiveness.
The common feature in these experiences is the necessity and inevitability of the process; we need to tell a mother of success and failure and we must express gratitude and remorse to our creator. This is perhaps the essence of religion; that which binds us and yet releases us too. Voltaire was right; “If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him”
I am conscious that in trying express myself I have often slipped between mother and parent, and I am aware too that what I say might equally apply to a lover or even close friend. I am conscious too that the corollary of my argument is that God may better thought of as a mother rather than a father, as is clearly supposed in the Gospels and throughout the Bible. Part of the problem is that we find it impossible not to give God a personality- he, she or it needs to be loving, creative, forgiving and so on- all of them human attributes which it is hard-but maybe getting easier- to divorce from gender. If there is any day of the year when it is appropriate to think about these questions, then surely it must be today. And if you can’t stomach the possible conclusion that we have been getting everything wrong for thousands of years, then you may at least accept that if God is not a woman there is nevertheless something divine in all mothers. And we can all be grateful for that.
Amen